Arrests

Junichi Sato's face clenched when he recalled opening the reeking box of whale meat -- all 50 pounds of it. "At first we thought it was someone's dismembered body," Sato said. "It was quite depressing." He and fellow Greenpeace activist Toru Suzuki had tracked the package to a mail depot in northern Japan after tipsters told them it contained whale meat bound for the country's black market, smuggled by crew members of a ship commissioned to kill the mammals for scientific research, not profit.

In an elder abuse case described by one investigator as the most outrageous he has ever seen, three former top managers at a Kern County nursing home have been arrested in the deaths of three residents who allegedly were given needless doses of psychotropic medications. The state attorney general's office contended in a criminal complaint that more than 20 residents at a skilled nursing center run by the Kern Valley Healthcare District were drugged "for staff convenience."

Rennison Vern Castillo thought his legal troubles were nearly over at the end of a jail stay for harassing his ex-girlfriend. But then a U.S. immigration hold order blocked his release. "They think you're here illegally," a jailhouse guard said to him. Castillo, mystified, insisted it was all a mistake. Though born in Belize, he had come of age in South Los Angeles, spoke fluent English, served a stint in the Army and had become an American citizen about seven years earlier.

Striking at a longtime practice in the Four Corners area, federal authorities Wednesday unsealed indictments against 24 people in what they called the largest investigation ever into the looting of Native American artifacts on public lands. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the charges at a Salt Lake City news conference and said in a telephone interview that many of the stolen items, valued at $335,000, came from sacred burial sites.

The brothers of Lambda Phi Epsilon at UCLA were excited to find the gray-and-teal apartment complex several blocks from campus. They had no house on Fraternity Row, but the complex could serve as their home base. About a dozen members of the Asian American fraternity moved into eight units in the 600 block of Midvale Avenue before the fall quarter started. In late September, they hosted a housewarming mixer to recruit new members. "Let us show you how Lambdas throw the sickest house parties in town and experience the social life that you can't experience any where else!"

Students in a UCLA chemistry lab watched helplessly Thursday afternoon as a classmate suddenly slashed the neck of a fellow student, causing serious injuries. The attack occurred just past noon on the sixth floor of Young Hall, prompting swift police mobilization and leaving students shaken by the violence as word spread across campus. One witness inside the lab told The Times that the alleged assailant, a 20-year-old male student in the class, walked up to the 20-year-old female victim and appeared to repeatedly punch her. The witness said he realized it was more serious when she slumped over, bleeding profusely from her neck.

Two Santa Ana College football players and a male friend were charged with raping and sexually assaulting a drunk or unconscious woman last summer and videotaping the crime, Orange County prosecutors said Friday. John Paul Foster II, 22, of Seaside in Monterey County, and Michael Alexander Clemmons, 19, of Tustin were arrested and arraigned this week in the July 2008 assault. The third suspect, Luster Ditto Lewis, 20, of Irvine, turned himself in Friday and was arraigned.

President Obama on Wednesday injected himself into the national debate over how law enforcement treats minorities. Responding to a question during his news conference, Obama said that the Cambridge, Mass., Police Department had acted "stupidly" in arresting his friend, prominent African American scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Harvard University professor was handcuffed and charged with disorderly conduct last week after police responded to a possible break-in at his home.

Five people, including a former Armenian consul, have been arrested in alleged schemes to block the deportation of illegal immigrants convicted of murder and other serious crimes, federal immigration officials announced Tuesday. The defendants allegedly obtained letters from the Armenian Consulate in Los Angeles and then sold them -- for as much as $35,000 each -- to at least two dozen convicted criminals facing deportation, officials said. The letters, which were sent to U.S.

On the evening of Feb. 24, 1986, LAPD homicide detectives found Sherri Rae Rasmussen's badly beaten body on the living room floor of her Van Nuys town house with wounds from three .38-caliber bullets to her chest. Weeks later, Stephanie Lazarus, a young Los Angeles police officer, called the Santa Monica Police Department to report that someone had broken into her car on 2nd Street, blocks from the pier. A gym bag had been stolen, she said.